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For dear Cari, who believes in chickens, another City Hall hen:

So the doctor emailed me. Finally. I do realize that it had only been a day and a half since I emailed her, but I am somewhat internet obsessed. Had you noticed? I like it when the emails fly back and forth, two people on line at the same time (but funnily enough I hate IMing), zap, zing, splat. I have a zjoosh sound that plays on my computer when I get a new email, and it’s such a pretty, happy sound. I like to hear it often. I DON’T like to wait a day and a half to hear back from a date. And it was a good email – she had fun, would like to do it again. Yeah, yeah….

I am so impatient that I bore myself.

Plotted with darling Greta on Sunday. Won’t reveal our plans to take over the world, but I just have to let you know that she is as remarkable on the phone as she is on her blog. Damn. And her plans for me to name my Rogue “Anne of Green Cables” just flipped my brain OUT.

Pop Culture update:

Sex and the City rocks with fibery goodness, no? A cabled pink hoodie AND an Icelandic lopi, on one screen. Damn. And Mischa’s still hot-hot-hot.

To the straight people watching The L Word: Be advised, a woman who is engaged to her boyfriend whom she loves, when attracted to a stunning Italian woman, will NOT cry copiously and demand to be left alone, and then pull her sweatshirt over her head. In the middle of the day. While the Italian looks mostly uninterested. Won’t happen. The rest of the show is humorously on-key, though.

Now. It’s my weekend. I’m putting my feet up for a while. I’ve been online WAY too long. You know when you just can’t pry your little fingers off the keyboard, and you realize you’re giving up quality knitting/reading/walking/writing time so you can read other people’s thoughts about their own knitting/reading/walking/writing time? Das me. I’m out.

https://rachaelherron.com/for_dear_cari_w/

It’s Maggi’s birthday! Just another day closer to perfection, that’s all.

I am totally happy and a little freaked out that there are so many L.M. Montgomery fans out there. It’s eerie, innit? How many threads connect us? We love to write. We love to knit. We love grammar. We love librarians and bookmobiles. We love Anne.

Anne was HUGE in my life. I used to, and probably still should, credit her with the way I turned out. I think as a kid I had a tendency to be a little morbid. I worried about the worst, sure it would happen. I couldn’t ride in a car without thinking of how easy it would be to crash. Feeding the chickens meant certain histoplasmosis. Then I started reading the Anne of Green Gables books, and over the course of years of reading all of them (and then re-reading, and re-reading again), I kind of became her. Or at least, I desperately wanted to have her imagination and ability to shift things around until they were Good. And I kinda learned it. A little.

(Huge confession, something not even my little mama knows (but she will now): When I was eighteen, my mother gave me my great-great aunt Lucy’s wedding ring. It’s small and delicate and I rarely take it off. It’s my most precious object. I had “Because of Anne” inscribed inside the band. I know. Incredibly silly. But I loved her that much, and still do. She’s probably the most alive fictional character that I carry in my mind, and the most influential.)

And now, thanks to Grace (OMG, see her comment yesterday, it’s wonderful), I have the first two volumes of the journals arriving from alibris. They’re out of print, so they’re PRICEY, but I don’t care. I know they’ll be much darker than the Anne or Emily books, but I don’t care. It’s just more language from Ms. Montgomery. I gotta go get my spoon, ‘cause I’m gonna eat it up.

(My favorite Montgomery, outside the Anne books, was The Blue Castle.)

Sharon in England sent me this, which I loved. It’s from the UK Telegraph. Someone stole a BUS in my favorite city. It’s police AND Venice related, so she gets two points.

Canal Chase in Venice Fuelled by Vodka and Nostalgia
By Bruce Johnston in Rome

(Filed: 02/02/2004)

A police chase broke out on the canals of Venice early yesterday after a Russian seaman, apparently fuelled by vodka and nostalgia, stole a water bus and roared off into the night.

After a 90-minute hunt officers caught up with and stormed the vaporetto as it moved at full throttle and arrested the man.

The man was named as Viktor Sobolev, 36, who officers said had illegally entered Italy and was evidently drunk after consuming “a copious amount of alcohol”.

He later explained his action by saying that he had missed being at sea.

At first the authorities took him for an al-Qa’eda terrorist intent on launching an attack on the huge petrochemical complex at Porto Marghera, just across from Venice on the lagoon.

As a result, the vaporetto’s disappearance from its berth near St Mark’s basin triggered a special anti-terrorist alert which was introduced to protect sensitive targets in Italy after the September 11 atrocities in America.

Venice’s transport corporation ACTV raised the alarm shortly before midnight.

Realising that one of its boats used on route 51 connecting the Lido with St Marks and Piazzale Roma, was missing, it used Global Positioning System technology on board to pinpoint its position. The system is usually used by Venetian authorities to check that water buses are keeping to the city’s strict speed limits.

As police and coastguards set off in hot pursuit the Russian turned his wheel hard, directing the large water bus at a lighter police boat in an unsuccessful attempt at ramming it.

Detective inspector Luigi Petrillo said: “Eventually we managed to force the vaporetto to do a U-turn back in the direction of Venice, and board it as it was moving.”

Sobolev faces charges of aggravated theft, resisting police officers, being without immigration papers, and breaking various navigation laws.

Hee!

**The doctor/date hasn’t emailed me back. Not that I mind so much, ’cause I was ambivalent anyway about the whole Dating thing. Even “You’re not my type” would be cool and understandable. But I think my feelings might get a little hurt if she NEVER emails back. Huh.**

On more important subjects, check this out. It’s beautiful. For my migraines, Sonja very sweetly sent me a flax eye pillow that she made herself. It’s silky and soft, and here it is with two of my favorite things, Proust and Digit.

Isn’t that awesome?

She said she’s not usually so cross-looking, that she must have stabbed herself with a cable needle, but I think she looks fabulous. In this picture she’s knitting her third BAWK hotty cozy. THIRD! She’s sent two away to daughters at college in Ontario, and this one was to stay home with the last girl, still living with her. (Three girls, just like us.) And the best part? A copy of the pattern went off to a friend in Prince Edward Island where the snow was piling high. PEI! Lucy Maud Montgomery will always be one of my most beloved authors. She’s comfort for the soul. (And Grace recommends her journals, which I haven’t read, and must.)

That’s all. It’s Sunday. I’m sleepy. Here’s hoping for a Quiet Super Bowl Sunday (I’m off work at 7pm, when the real post-drinking madness begins…..) Enjoy the commercials, and if you partake, the game itself. Or go shopping for books. Super Bowl Sunday is a wonderful book-buying day…..

Okay. Let’s talk irony.

Had a date with a doctor last night.

Just goes to show you, doesn’t it?

Anyway. It was a blind date, only my second one ever, to my recollection (which usually ain’t that great, but I’m sticking with this number). I met her off that silly Craigslist post I told you about. She wrote back to me late in the game and sounded sweet and funny, two very good things. I wrote back and said, basically, Okay. Let’s get a burger. I’m tired of that whole Pre-Screening practice that happens on-line nowadays. You send seventy-two clever, witty emails back and forth, the precursors to a great love followed by a fabulous marriage and a stunning life, until the person says s/he loves eggplant and you think Oh, I could never date an Eggplant Person, and the correspondence is off. (Unless of course, it’s a Super Eggplant kind of person, then we’ll get along famously.)

So we made plans to get a burger. I told her I’d be the one in the orange sweater. Thought that was distinctive enough, no? I waited inside Barney’s, strangely un-nervous, and watched a group of three come in. Thought to myself, she’s cute, but she’s with other people, can’t be her. But it was, she had accidentally run into friends out front. She was tall and a little unconventional looking. I don’t know what I mean by that, exactly. Huh. But it’s a good thing.

Anyway, we had a very nice time. We met at eight, and I didn’t get home till almost midnight. We both wanted to talk more, so we walked to a local dive bar that I knew, and we sat and drank beers and laughed. I have NO idea what’s going to happen now, and I don’t really much care, to be honest. It was just nice to be out, to listen to someone new and interesting, to be listened to.

Nice. All right. ‘Nuff.

In knitting news: the lavender Lush is out for Rogue. Several well-intentioned friends have advised me that not only is Lush HOT as hell (and I could overheat in a snowbank), but after regular wearing, it haloes so much that the cables are obscured. And I am SO not making such a gorgeous sweater with such incredible cabling, only to have it be a fuzzy too-warm blob. That’s what my cat Adah is. I don’t need another one. I’ve finished the cabling in both sleeves (I had been doing both at once) and will finish them up, I think. And then in the future, I think I’ll just make a simple cardie to attach the sleeves to, but that’ll be after Cromarty. (I think I’ve decided to totally copy Cari and do Rogue, eventually, in Cascade 220, in that lovely green she has–she swears it’s not mint like The Sweater I Hate).

Ah, knitting. I think I alarmed J last night with the fiber-chat. I tried to keep it to a bare minimum, but to people with no yarn experience, completely obsessed knitters can be a little overwhelming. She has no IDEA that I blog. Don’t tell, kay?

How ’bout a photo blog today, because I’m TIRED and LAZY. I absolutely adore going home to see the little mama, but I drive south the moment I wake up on Tuesday and come back Thursday night, and have to get up early on Friday to start my week. I completely neglect things like laundry and vacuuming. And sleep.

Yawn.

Oh, well. That’s the way the chocolate chip cookie crumbles. Like these:

Mariko gave them to me! And OH, are they good. Let me rephrase: Oh, WERE they good. See all those? All gone.

And here we are:

We’re in Bubblegum Alley, one of the tourist attractions of San Luis Obispo, which is midway between her house and my parent’s home. As a kid, I thought this was the coolest thing ever, and my little brain dreamed of owning all that gum, pre-chew. Now it’s rather germy, but still grossly cool.

We had a lovely coffee together at Linnaea’s, the coffee-house where I spent many, many under-grad hours. She was as delightful as you would gather from her blog, and I wished we had had more time together. She has the biggest smile! Again, it was weirdly Not Weird. You would totally think it would feel odd, meeting an on-line friend. But it doesn’t. It’s just like what it is: Meeting a friend for coffee. She’s a doll. (Another picture is over at her blog.)

Mom’s doing better! Still not much motion in her final diagnosis or treatment, but we did manage to bully from the PA a referral to the endocrinologist that she needs to see. The PA said that she was qualified enough to tell Mom that there’s nothing else to be done, that she’ll just have to ride the thyroid problems out, but I refuse to accept that, and I talked Mom into agreeing with me. And more, we talked the PA into writing the referral. So my mission was accomplished. HiYAH!

We managed to get to the movies, too. We saw Girl With a Pearl Earring, which was bee-yoo-tiful. And hello, Colin Firth. That man gets more ger-jess every time. I swear, he’s LoTR-Viggo-cute in this one. Mom says it’s just the hair, but she was a little swoony, too.

Here’s the little mama with her little cat Kahlua:

I realized while at Mom’s house that she has: One incontinent cat, one deaf/allergy-prone cat, and one hyper-thyroid cat. She sees the vet as much as she sees her own doctors. No, more. This one is the deaf, 16 year-old one. They manually hydrate her every other day because she suffers from kidney problems, too. Oy.

More pictures:

Driving home from the fabulous Mariko visit, I stopped off in Shell Beach. The novel I’m working on is set there, and I wanted to drive the streets, see if I could pinpoint exactly where my main character lives. (I actually did find the house, I think, but there was a fella working on his truck in her driveway. The cheek! I cruised past it a couple of times with the top down, and then finally shot a sneaky sideways snapshot, but I think I was made. Not a good photo, either.)

But here’s what’s at the end of the street:

This is where we like to have donuts in the morning, when Mom’s feeling up for it. Next time I go visit, we’ll be right here in the morning, listening to the seals bark.

Back on the road, I stopped off in the Arroyo Grande village so I could show y’all the Swinging Bridge. It’s behind City Hall, suspended over the little creek. As a kid, it was THE thing to do, run to the middle of it and jump or rock until the bridge got swaying enough to make a five-year-old seasick. As eight-year-olds, that was cool. Here’s the bridge:

And here’s me, just ’bout ready to run over it, all by my lonesome.

Dude, that was fun. But remember, while in the park, please don’t let your dog:

Now, isn’t that taking a visual cue a leetle too far?

One last image before I jump back into Real Life; these are the chickens that live behind City Hall.

That’s what kind of a rural area it is. Well, okay, it’s not THAT rural, there are more SUVs than pick-em-up trucks, but the town is ringed by strawberry fields, and the mayor is usually an acquaintance.

Now. Back to work. Happy Friday to you! (Rogue pics soon, I swear.)

*Random thought – I want TiVo. Bad.

Quickly:

I feel SO much better this morning. I believe it’s all due to my dear readers’ good thoughts AND Christy and Mom listening to me growl last night. And the hot bath helped, as did all the drugs I could find in my medicine cabinet – the panicked “two of these and one of these and oh, this can’t hurt, either!” kind of pill-popping. Not to worry, I don’t mix and match much, and we’re talking marrying tylenol with sudafed, but whatever I did, it worked. That migraine never quite latched. It was still revving up when I went to sleep, and when I woke, it was GONE.

Like magic.

I feel better equipped this morning to wrestle with printing the Rogue pattern, which I REALLY want to start in the lavender Lush (50% wool, 50% angora, ooooohhhhh). But if I can’t make it print, I have socks to do, and that’s just fine. Why did it feel like the end of the world last night?

Sometimes it’s the little things. The big problems I am equipped to handle. Those I can usually take and process and work with on my own. I’m strong enough for them. The little things like last night (did I tell you I dropped a glass full of water that then shorted out the teakettle? Grrr) are the things that make me crawl on the carpet (which I found out last night I REALLY have to have shampooed) in self-pitying misery.

Over it. And I’m happy that I get a long drive today. Usually I don’t look forward to it, but today I am. It’s raining softly, and it has been since last night, so I expect I’ll chase the rain during the four-hour drive south. The kitties are going with me, and Digit came back from his morning run, so I’m not worried about trapping him. I have a couple of new CDs to listen to and I plan on turning the brain off (except for the Steer Avoid Brake part) and relaxing. And hugging little mama by the end of the day!

I’ll be back on Thursday, prolly won’t post till Friday. So have a good week, all. And thanks.